


Branded

by owlmoose



Series: From Dust We Came [2]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Missing Scene, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:56:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlmoose/pseuds/owlmoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a breach of trust, Kasia Brosca and Alistair learn some things about each other, and renegotiate the terms of their friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Branded

Things had been tense in camp since leaving Redcliffe, thanks to Alistair and Kasia’s shouting match about how things had gone down there. Kasia didn’t want to think differently of Alistair, just based on who his father was, but it was hard to avoid it. A noble. He was a sodding _noble_. Yeah, okay, maybe a bastard, but a noble nonetheless. And then he questioned her decisions when he wouldn’t step up himself — the senior Warden, the human, the one who was more used to navigating this world in every way? He was just lucky she'd bothered to apologize at all.

And she had apologized, eventually, and he had accepted, graciously, but relations between them were still strained — he didn’t flirt with her anymore, and she kept her distance, walking with Leliana or Scraps rather than him. They were halfway to Denerim before she even felt right sitting next to him by the fire. But then one night she caught him looking at her, pensively, and raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, glancing away.

She scootched closer to him. “Look,” she said, and pointed to her cheek. “Do you know what this is?”

“It’s a tattoo, of course,” he replied. “Lots of people have them. Although I admit I’ve not seen any quite like the one over your eye before.”

Kasia lightly ran a finger over the brown bar on her forehead. She had gotten that during a night of drunken debauchery with her old buddy Falehn, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, celebrating a job that had gone well. After a few too many skins of ale, they’d begged another duster they knew to give them a matched set — he’d gotten his over his left eye, while hers was on her right. It had seemed so romantic at the time, making them a matched set, together forever. A few weeks later, Falehn got caught lifting goods from the wrong merchant and ended up with the Legion of the Dead. She still thought about him, sometimes. But he had to be long dead by now. “Forever” never seemed to last very long in Dust Town.

Shaking off the cobwebs of bittersweet memories, she looked up at Alistair with a nod. “Well, that’s a tattoo. I chose to get it. But this—” she moved her finger to her cheek and traced the spiral there. “This is a brand. They marked me the day I was born, and it’ll be there until the day I die. Because I’m casteless, which means that, to the dwarves, I’m nothing. I’m less than nothing.” She let her hand fall into her lap. “And they want to make sure that everyone knows it.”

Alistair tipped his head to the side, eyes softening. “They? They, who?”

“The nobility, of course.” Kasia shifted around, bringing her legs forward, feet toward the fire, and leaned back on her hands. “They control every single person in Orzammar. Or they try, anyway.” She tipped her head backwards to look up at the sky, that giant yawning nothing so different from Orzammar’s rock ceilings. Most of them would never see the night sky, and would be frightened by even the thought of it. But she wasn’t. She loved looking at the stars. They were so pretty.

“I’m not one of them, you know.” It was so soft she almost didn’t hear it, and when she turned he was staring at her, eyes bright with pleading intensity. “Up here, bastards aren’t worth very much, either.”

She lowered her own eyes. “I know. But at least you don’t have to wear your birthright on your face.”

“That’s true.” He looked away. “Well. I’m glad Duncan got you out of there, at least.”

“So am I.” She returned her attention to the sky. “I’m not looking forward to going back.”

“You’re a Grey Warden now.” Alistair shifted, and she noticed out of the corner of her eyes that he was watching the stars now, too. “They’ll treat you with respect, or they’ll answer to me.”

She turned toward him, saw the truth of it in his face, and she had to fight the urge to reach out and cover his hand. But something stopped her: was he hiding other things from her? Would he get angry the next time she made a decision he didn’t like? And he’d spoken with such confidence just now — like someone who expected his words to carry weight, no matter what he said about having no power, no influence. No. Better not to open herself up to letting him hurt her again. “Thank you,” was all she said.

He glanced at her, a small smile on his lips. “We’re the last of the Grey Wardens, right? That means we need to stick together. Until the Blight is done.”

“Until then,” she replied. And she turned back to the canopy of stars, losing her thoughts in the bigness of the sky.


End file.
